Gaming & Culture —

Getting some much-needed attention for Xbox’s best indie games

The Xbox Live Indie Games Uprising highlights diamonds in the rough.

Ask practically any indie game developer, and they'll tell you that the hardest part of making a successful game isn't necessarily coming up with a concept, programming it, or even creating the art. It's getting your game noticed after it's released.

This problem is even more pronounced if you decide to release your game on Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG), the completely open Xbox 360 service that lets anyone with $99 to spring on an annual XNA account become a console game developer. "Community curation is a gift and a curse," indie developer Dave Voyles told Ars. "On the one hand, it's open to anybody to submit what they want. On the other hand, there's a lot of crap coming in and there's not much you can do about it."

That's where the Xbox Live Indie Game Uprising can help. Now in its third incarnation, the Uprising is an unofficial effort to highlight some of the best games on a service where it's notoriously hard to separate the wheat from the sizable amount of chaff. Over the next two weeks, the Uprising will highlight a different game almost every weekday, with selections ranging from the unpronounceable 3D snakiness of qrth-phyl to the Portal-esque 2D puzzles of Gateways to the Majora's-Mask-meets-terrorism gameplay of City Tuesday.

"We're kind of saying here are some—not really artsy games, but some games we enjoyed making or playing, and we think you would too," Voyles said.

That's important, because Microsoft's current system for presenting Xbox Live Indie Games to the public makes it hard for the average gamer to find these kinds of games when they show up. For starters, the Xbox Live Indie Games section on the Xbox 360 dashboard is hidden five or six clicks over from the initial home screen, far past lucrative real estate that Microsoft sells directly to advertisers.

Even when you get there, though, the first games you see will tend to be lowest-common-denominator drivel. The most profitable games on Xbox Live Indie Games, Voyles notes, tend to be titles that already have an "external demand," games patterned off successful hits like Minecraft or Call of Duty, or featuring popular themes like zombies or Xbox Live Avatars. Those are the games that tend to rocket to the top of XBLIG's "top downloads" list and stay there, Voyles said, which pushes anything new or interesting further away from users' view.

"The top downloads list is somewhat static," Dave Voyles said. "You have a lot of Castle/Craft/Miner type games that stay on top, which is fine because people are buying them... but on the other hand, nobody is really coming close to reaching those kinds of downloads or sales, so you check the top downloads or sales and it's always the same."

"Whereas something like Steam—you turn on Steam every day and that list is constantly changing," he continued. "They have some sort of algorithm that is kind of catered toward you, so every day you're discovering new games whose prices are changing that are applicable to your tastes. If Microsoft did something like that I really think they'd see a nice boost in sales and visibility."

Indie developer Michael Hicks, who is organizing this year's Uprising with Voyles, said he wishes Microsoft would pay attention to suggestions like the Xona proposal, a 2010 open letter offering ways to improve the peer evaluation and ranking process for XBLIG. By making rankings on the service more responsive to user voting, the proposal would ensure a constant rotation of new, quality content at the top of the listings, similar to websites like reddit or Digg.

"I'm glad there's no gate [to get on XBLIG]," Hicks said, "because I wouldn't have been able to start developing if there was a gate. At the same time, I'd like to see some kind of way to filter that kind of stuff out. It's kind of a gray area for me. I feel great that there's no barriers, but part of me kind of wishes [there was] some way to see the games that are great but kind of underlooked."

The previous two incarnations of the XBLIG Uprising have done a pretty good job of overcoming those problems and getting much-needed attention for some of the service's best games. Cute Things Die Violently racked up over 25,000 sales after being featured in last year's Summer Uprising, and fellow offering Speed Runner got enough attention to warrant a Steam release, as has current Uprising title Gateways.

That kind of wider release is really the best possible outcome for most of these Uprising games, which will probably never sell all that many copies while hidden in the Indie Game swamp, even with the Uprising's help. "The way I personally look at [success] is to see how many games get to other platforms, or how many developers get recognized and lead to other popular games," Voyles said.

"That's the beef I have with a lot of developers," Hicks added. "They think XBLIG is supposed to be this big marketplace, but I think it's more of a starting point, and it's done its job really well as a starting point, because there's a lot of developers that have moved on from there."

"I wouldn't go in expecting a fortune," Voyles continued, "but if you're trying to show off a game that you have, you can't really find a better place. It's self-curated, XNA is really easy to work with as a programmer, and you have 40 million active users on Xbox Live that see your game."

Promoted Comments

XBLIG is not hard to find, especially with the new dashboard. It's getting gamers to try it out that's the problem. A lot of gamers automatically think it's a lesser category so they don't even venture into it. They could definitely do something to shake up discovery rather than just do alphabetical or top selling.

Surprisingly, achievements is a big hanging point with a lot of gamers. I don't understand why since I'm not an achievement hunter, but I have literally heard quite a number of people say they don't buy XBLIG because there are no achievements.

Another thing is most XBLIG titles do not have online multiplayer. That's a feature that does take a lot of time and resources to do, but it's needed for a lot of gamers.

And value is a weird bulletpoint that some people use. I tell them so-and-so XBLIG title is great and only $1 or $3. But then they say they just got Batman Arkham City GOTY edition for $10 on sale. Is this XBLIG title close to that game? Or they got Assassin's Creed used for $6. And somehow they say that because you can get full-blown commercial retail games for dirt cheap, that XBLIG titles are worthless.

But it's not just that. A lot of the mainstream gaming sites don't cover XBLIG. And when they do, they only do it to make fun of bad titles rather than show the gems. And there's a lot of gems out there. Or they'll highlight really strange titles that may be unique, but aren't fun or mainstream enough to attract attention. Kotaku is one of the worst offenders. I would go through their "great XBLIG titles" list and I find many superior XBLIG titles are constantly going unreviewed and unreported.

And for the developers out there, stop with all the 8-bit looking stuff. It doesn't make your game look any more original. It just makes it look cheap. It doesn't help that XBLIG features like Kotaku or IGN always do some weird kind of 8-bit game of the week thing.

293 posts | registered Jun 9, 2005

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11 Reader Comments

I gave up on using the 360 for indie game long ago. Searching through the inventory is like pulling teeth. Forget the crap one must sort through, that's part of all platforms when it comes to both indie and corporate wares. STEAM is simply the easiest to use service, and right now that mean Windows and to a lesser extent MacOS only.

Don't get too excited, the only gameplay aspect of Majora that I see relates to the fact that you are in a timeloop just prior to a terrorist event. Which is pretty fascinating, and I like the aesthetics of the game, but it's more of a Source Code than a Majora's Mask so far as my experience watching the trailer.

Isn't Majora's Mask kinda already about terrorism? I mean, there's a helpless populace who has no choice but to feel fear as the moon collides with their world. It's definitely a groundbreaking plot compared to the "villain conquers the world, you save the seemingly helpless populace and a princess" narrative.

I checked the "indie" section on XBL a few times...it's full of crap games (mainly Minecraft knock-offs!) and VERY little that would interest any gamer. There are a few gems, but good luck finding them with Microsoft's CRAPPY UI!

They NEED some curation here. They NEED to keep the knock offs and the "make a quick buck" games off of the system. And they need to focus on the TALENTED developers who are coming up with interesting games. As it sits now, I will NOT be visiting the indie section again....

Independent content is coming in a flood in eBooks, games, music, and even movies/tv. It will take time to develop sorting mechanisms and new gatekeepers, but I'd rather have an open environment where gems can rise to the top against a strictly controlled system where only a few "hits" that are formula driven to maximize profit are force-fed to me.

Agreed, the XBLIG marketplace is inconvenient to browse and the game ratings aren't always a reliable indicator of quality. The latter is true of pretty much any game rating site, though, as there's no accounting for taste. As far as I'm aware, astro-turfing isn't much of a problem in the XBLIG ratings.

A lot of casual gamers play just a few hours a week and don't have the patience / attention span to sift through piles of indie game demos. They're not even going to try an indie game unless their friends rave about how good it is.

On the topic of bad indie games (deplorably bad as in fart apps and lightshow games), I read a funny thing once on the XNA forums. Although such games can't be rejected unless they fall afoul of the official XBLIG guidelines, one poster suggested that the community should simply refuse to review them. Without 3 community reviews, the game cannot be released.

XBLIG is not hard to find, especially with the new dashboard. It's getting gamers to try it out that's the problem. A lot of gamers automatically think it's a lesser category so they don't even venture into it. They could definitely do something to shake up discovery rather than just do alphabetical or top selling.

Surprisingly, achievements is a big hanging point with a lot of gamers. I don't understand why since I'm not an achievement hunter, but I have literally heard quite a number of people say they don't buy XBLIG because there are no achievements.

Another thing is most XBLIG titles do not have online multiplayer. That's a feature that does take a lot of time and resources to do, but it's needed for a lot of gamers.

And value is a weird bulletpoint that some people use. I tell them so-and-so XBLIG title is great and only $1 or $3. But then they say they just got Batman Arkham City GOTY edition for $10 on sale. Is this XBLIG title close to that game? Or they got Assassin's Creed used for $6. And somehow they say that because you can get full-blown commercial retail games for dirt cheap, that XBLIG titles are worthless.

But it's not just that. A lot of the mainstream gaming sites don't cover XBLIG. And when they do, they only do it to make fun of bad titles rather than show the gems. And there's a lot of gems out there. Or they'll highlight really strange titles that may be unique, but aren't fun or mainstream enough to attract attention. Kotaku is one of the worst offenders. I would go through their "great XBLIG titles" list and I find many superior XBLIG titles are constantly going unreviewed and unreported.

And for the developers out there, stop with all the 8-bit looking stuff. It doesn't make your game look any more original. It just makes it look cheap. It doesn't help that XBLIG features like Kotaku or IGN always do some weird kind of 8-bit game of the week thing.

To everyone complaining that "XBLIG UI sucks" - You're right, it's weak. There needs to be improvement to at least highlight quality titles over the shovelware.

To everyone who thens goes on to say "so I'm never going back/won't use it" - You're the reason it won't get fixed. Microsoft, like any large company, is in the business of giving people what they'll pay for. If McDonalds did market research that came back that said their profit would increase overnight by offering tacos, you'd see them tomorrow. Remember McPizza? As it stands, Microsoft has no financial motivation to upgrade the XBLIG system. There isn't enough cash being spent in it.

There are other reasons for Microsoft's apathy on this. Not the least of which is their vested interest in XBLA, which is why you don't see achievements in Indie games. However, if there was a sudden influx of gamers actually spending money in XBLIG you'd be surprised how fast some middle manager would jump at the opportunity to 'leverage their platform to maximize visibility and profit.'

So, if you want it to change, vote with your dollars. Do some quick research and get yourself some good Indie games. Even if everyone else doesn't follow suit, the worst case scenario is that you got some cheap, fun, original games for yourself.